


Skin Deep

by eirabach



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Angst, Family Reunions, Gen, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Jeff Tracy has five sons, Let's hope it gets better, Post-Canon, he just doesn't know them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22861441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: Time heals all wounds is a fallacy.A five things fic that isn't really a five things fic at all. After all, a man rarely comes back from the dead more than once.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 43





	Skin Deep

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on Tumblr in a post The Long Reach sobbing fit. Now somewhat edited!

_**Scott** _

It starts with a mission. 

Nothing too out of the ordinary, just a freighter struggling at the edge of the atmosphere, an unstable fuel supply, and his teenage son piloting a rocket to relieve them. Perhaps it is a _little_ out of the ordinary. He does try not to show it though.

Alan is certainly an accomplished pilot, maybe even better than Jeff himself. He's certainly better than Jeff had been as an eighteen year old, taking pretty girls out for joyrides in his mother's ancient turboprop.

Alan is doing just fine.

Scott? Not so much.

Jeff had been led to understand that John had fielded _all_ of IR's calls during Jeff's long absence, a fact that certainly accounts for the dark circles beneath the boy's eyes, so it was John's toes he'd worried about stepping on when he'd begun routing calls through to his desk, although John had assured him he'd be glad of the rest.

As it turns out it isn't John's voice interrupting his every order.

He mutes the line between himself and Three, and spins his chair to glower at his eldest. Scott is pouring over the telemetry, his knuckles white against the edge of the pad.

"Scott," he says, as strongly as he dares. "You're confusing the kid. I know what I'm doing."

"But Alan --"

"Is _my_ son!" He regrets it at once, the way Scott's jaw drops and his hands fall. Hates the way he sounds -- like a bitter old man. Jealous. He hadn't even known he had it in him until it was out and he _hates_ it.

He hates the way he means it, how Scott's single nod sits like satisfaction at the back of his throat when it ought to sting.

"I know," Scott says, all quiet and reasonable as though he might be Virgil in a mask. "but he's still my brother."

Soft words gently said, yet they leave a burn he feels right across his heart.

He doesn't quite know why. 

  
  


**_Virgil_ **

Virgil is his grandmother reborn, with one fairly major difference. Virgil is absolutely big enough to pick Jeff up and put him in his room if he thinks for one moment that Jeff might be overdoing it.

It seems he thinks Jeff is overdoing it a lot.

It's the third full med scan of the week, and Jeff has undergone less torturous poking and prodding in order to be shot into space than Virgil appears to deem necessary for him to be allowed to head down to the hanger under his own power.

It's touching. It's sweet. It's… getting a little old.

He isn't likely to tell Virgil that though, because although he's treating Jeff as though he's made of glass it's clear to anyone with eyes to see that Jeff's not the fragile one in this room.

Another vial of blood, another heart rate monitor. Another whisper, directed somewhere around his right knee.

"I'm so sorry, dad."

This has to stop. "For _what_?"

"Scott never gave up."

Ah. Jeff's been gone a long time, but some things never change. Virgil has never been one to admit to being wrong. This is probably as close as he'll ever come, suggesting that on this single occasion Scott might be right, and it's so damn unnecessary that if it weren't for his son's downturned expression Jeff might be inclined to laugh.

"Tell me something Virgil. Do you still play?"

"Yeah, yeah when disasters allow. You know how it is."

Jeff very much doesn't, but he fears a reminder of that fact might just tip Virgil over the edge.

"You stopped for a while, as I recall. After your mother went."

"Yeah. It hurt too much, knowing she'd -- that she'd never hear me again." Narrowed eyes. "You remember that?"

"I'm getting old, Virgil. I'm not senile." A smile. "Did you ever give up painting?"

Virgil stares, then, shaking his head.

"No. I never gave up painting."

Jeff thinks of his own art, scratched into the walls of his hellish home. The villa. Three. His Lucy's eyes scrawled over and over until they became too much to bear and were ignominiously hidden behind a washing machine. Those same eyes look up at him now, searching for a reassurance Jeff barely remembers how to give.

"Hmm." Jeff squeezes his wrist, lies back on the med bed, and closes his own. "Glad to hear it."

**_John_ **

He doesn't know what to make of it, any of it. He only knows that John's standing before him with a computer in his hands and an expression on his face that suggests Jeff needs to tread very, very carefully.

Unfortunately, this has never been his strong point. Eight years of isolation have not helped.

"What _is_ it?"

The computer flashes, a circle of yellow light, and John winces. A voice Jeff doesn't know echoes around his lounge. 

"I prefer _she_."

"My apologies," he manages, because his mother's watching and she didn't raise an oaf. "What is _she_?"

"John made me."

"She's _yours_?"

John shuffles on the spot, awkward, as though he's confessing to something rather more dire than the writing of a computer program.

"She's not -- I don't own her. I created her, but she's -- she's her own person. Kinda. We're working on it."

"Working on it?" His voice goes up at the end. John winces again. The computer glows. Amber to red to amber. "She's sentient? You created a sentient being?"

Gordon laughs, because Gordon would, and claps Jeff on the shoulder.

"Your first grandkid is a sociopathic sentient computer code. Bet you weren't expecting that one."

"I do not like you, Gordon Tracy."

Gordon beams at this, and John rolls his eyes. It almost looks like they've had this conversation before. Rehearsed it. He'd believe that of John. He'd believe almost anything of John. But this --

"See?" Gordon's still grinning. John's still watching him, the computer held close to his chest. "She's totally John's kid. Grandpa, meet Eos. Eos, this is your Gramps."

"Charmed," she says, the echo of John's laugh in her voice and _Christ._ Christ. He needs a scotch.

He'd never dared to dream of grandchildren. He knows why.

Shame chases the whiskey down his throat.

**_Gordon_ **

He spends a lot more time out in the pool now. It starts as physiotherapy, Virgil and Gordon guiding his struggling body through the motions that will help to strengthen atrophied muscles and support weakened bones, but becomes, in time, a place he spends the hours after dinner, watching his youngest children and wishing for things he'll never have.

He does it a lot, enough that his space pale face is now bronzed and pink, enough that Gordon and Alan think nothing of a cry of ' _c'mon, get Dad!_ '. Enough, that when Gordon grabs him round the waist and goes to throw him, he shouldn't be shocked. He should have _noticed._

There's a great silver-red scar arching from his boy's shoulder and curving up his spine, stopping just where the high collar of his blues must hide it. 

What the hell happened? What the _hell_ happened?

He must say it out loud, or maybe his face says it for him, because Gordon freezes, releasing him, and then just stands there. A little hunched. A little sheepish. In the pool Alan treads water, silent. Waiting.

Alan knows. Jeff does not.

That's just the way of things, now.

"Had an accident."

Alan scoffs, his voice louder across the water. "Nearly got _murdered,_ more like."

Jeff's grip tightens until Gordon flinches. He lets go as though burnt, but his hand still hovers there, just above the puckered ridge of skin. Waits.

"Son?"

Gordon shrugs, the scar pulling tight.

"Alan's exaggerating, dad. It wasn't --"

"He nearly _died_!"

"I got _better,_ " there's a false sort of brightness to it, a twist to Gordon's mouth that suggests Alan is probably closer to the truth than Jeff would like. "It's no big deal, dad. Swear. It's _nothing_. I don't want to make a thing of it."

The sun dips below the horizon and throws a last burst of red across the water, across Gordon's back and Jeff's hand and he wants to argue. Wants to demand. Wants the information that's _owed_ to him as this boy's father. Who would dare lay a finger on his boy? Just how close had he come to losing him without even knowing?

But his funny little boy isn't a boy anymore, and Jeff's rights to his stories are lost somewhere in the trail of the stars.

"Of course, son," he tells him. "Of course."

**_Alan_ **

He catches Alan at the table, some piece of electronic junk spread out in front of him like a childhood jigsaw, his brows furrowed.

"Everything alright there, Alligator?"

Alan's nose wrinkles at the old nickname, as though he's forgotten. Probably he has. Jeff had left him just a little boy, and he's come back to, if not a man, then a boy right on the cusp of adulthood. A boy who's already been taught to shave, and fly, and behave by other men who are not and never will be, him.

"Yeah, yeah all good." He looks up and smiles. Alan's smiles were the purest memory he'd had, out there. They're more beautiful than he'd remembered. "What's up?"

"Not much, believe it or not." Jeff sits, fiddling with a transistor as Alan blows dust from a circuit board. "Electrical engineering, huh? You thought any more about college?"

Alan turns the board over and over in his fingers. "Not really?" He shrugs. "Like you said, I've got a rocket. I save people. I dunno what letters after my name are gonna do to help."

"Well," Jeff says mildly, "it never hurts to have a plan b, son."

Alan drops the circuit board, shoves the various pieces as far away as he can reach, and turns on Jeff with an expression half fury and half abject terror.

"For _what_? What do I need a plan b for, dad? What's gonna happen now?"

And for all Jeff is a man, a grown man, he doesn't have an answer for that.

  
  
  
  



End file.
